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Destiny Beta July 17th

With the launch of Destiny months away, Bungie has revealed more information regarding upcoming betas and content releases. Destiny’s next beta event will go live on July 17th for Playstation 4 and Playstation 3 owners, with the Xbox One and 360 following on July 23rd. Servers will go offline between the 21st and 22nd for maintenance, and then will resume service until the 28th. Three collector’s edition packages will be made available for Destiny, including the usual array of vanity items as well as a steelbook case and access to the first two expansions. The Ghost Edition includes a ghost replica, as well as a letter of introduction and golden age relics.

Pre-ordering receives early access to Vanguard gear. Destiny launches 9/9/2014.

(Source: Bungie press release)

MMOrning Shots: Gorilla Warfare

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from RuneScape, where Jagex has teamed up with the Unity for Wildlife charity and United for Rhino campaign to help raise awareness for illegal poaching. Over the course of the next two weeks, players will be able to answer daily rhino questions. Answer four of them correctly and adopt your very own white rhino. Get ten questions and you’ll have a black rhino to hug and squeeze and call George.

Save MMOrning Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

MMOments: RuneScape Companion App

I finally had a chance to try out the RuneScape companion app on my iPad today. Currently the app isn’t an actual app, as in one that you download through the Google Play store or Apple store, but exists as a website you access through your device’s browser. The app allows access to a multitude of features, including your bank, the Grand Exchange, stock market, chat, and more. I tested this out using an iPad mini, and found performance to be mostly alright. There is a bit of annoyance in setting up the device, as you are required to have an authenticator set up to access features like the Grand Exchange, which is likely on the same device. You also have to talk to the tutorial NPC at the Grand Exchange and enable access through the game.

As a companion app for RuneScape on the go, this is turning out to be a pretty good program. Trading is done seamlessly via items stored in the bank, and anything purchased through the Grand Exchange is stored in your bank as well. Merchants can use the app on their phone while out of the house to continue making money flipping items (buy low, sell high), which is what many seem to already be doing. You can even simply use the app to keep up with your friends and clan using the chat program. The distractions & diversions window shows progress and reset timers on activities, making it possible to check progress without actually going in-game.

But none of this is useful if you want to have the companion app open while playing, as currently you cannot be logged into both simultaneously (which is unlikely to change). Logging into RuneScape will kick you out of the companion app. On the other hand, you can also access the companion app from your desktop browser, meaning that you don’t need one of those fancy smartphones or tablets to enjoy the convenience.

I have high hopes for the RuneScape companion app.

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MMOrning Shots: Cthulhu Slumbers Again

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from The Secret World, where I’ve managed to make my way past the core game content and into Issue #1 without ever finishing the first dungeon. Call me lazy, but I’ve always found The Secret World’s grouping system to be a major pain in the rear. Couple that with the fact that I don’t always play during peak hours and the admitted lack of players queueing for early game dungeons, and today was the first chance I had with qualified healer.

I’ll be heading back to Transylvania to deal with the king of all vampires, and by that I mean Luis Suarez. Get your blood drained by MMOrning Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Perfect World Scoping Out Warframe Developer

Perfect World Entertainment is in talks to acquire Digital Extremes, developers of the popular Warframe shooter. Nothing concrete has been determined at this point, as Perfect World conducts a due diligence investigation into the affairs of Digital Extremes. Digital Extremes has not commented on the impending buyout due to legal reasons:

You may have read something about the business development side of Digital Extremes and it may have you concerned. For legal reasons, we can’t disclose specifics but if you know the history of Warframe you’d know that we are intent on having Warframe’s design remain in the hands of Digital Extremes. Yes, opportunities will arise for us but the game itself is and will remain a labor of love.

More information to come as this story develops.

(Source: Press Release)

The Secret World Second Anniversary Kicks Off

The Secret World has kicked off its second anniversary with golems once again invading the world, as well as new world bosses in Tokyo. Yes, I said Tokyo.

Many hours of new content is also introduced with a new mission pack for the Tokyo game zone called Side Stories: Love & Loathing. Here players get to fight off the demonic invasion of Tokyo or try their hand at complex Origami in a deep Investigation Mission, among many other challenges.

All players will enjoy double experience, extra tokens, and free membership for recruiting.

(Source: Funcom press release)

Less Massive: Dungeon Keeper Ad Deemed Misleading

A rather notable blow has been struck against the free to play industry, with the removal of a Dungeon Keeper ad on the grounds that it was misleading. The Advertising Standards Agency in the UK looked into a consumer complaint that Electronic Arts was misleadingly advertising Dungeon Keeper as a free to play game while omitting important information about the game’s cash shop. The ASA upheld the complaint, based on what it regards to be excessive, frequent, and unreasonable time-gates on content.

As posted on the ASA website:

While we understood that the average consumer would appreciate that free-to-play games were likely to contain monetisation functions, we considered that they would also expect the play experience of a game described as ‘free’ to not be excessively restricted. Similarly, although we acknowledged that a timer mechanism could be a legitimate part of gameplay experience, the nature of the timer frequency and length in Dungeon Keeper, in combination with the way it was monetised, was likely to create a game experience for non-spenders that did not reflect their reasonable expectations from the content of the ad. Because the game had the potential to restrict gameplay beyond that which would be expected by consumers and the ad did not make this aspect of the role of in-app purchasing clear, we concluded that it was misleading.

EA’s CEO recently called Dungeon Keeper a “shame,” after the game was met with overwhelming backlash and quickly dropped off of the app charts, followed by the closure of Mythic Entertainment.

(Source: Pocket Gamer)

MMOrning Shots: $600k Smite

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Hi-Rez Studios, who want everyone to know about the upcoming world championship for Smite to be held in Atlanta, Georgia, home of the Atlanta Georgians. The prize pool currently stands at six hundred thousand and is expected to grow in time thanks to community contributions and content sales. The top two teams from North America, Europe, China, as well as the top teams from Brazil and Spanish-speaking South America will be present to face off.

Check out MMOrning Shots between 7am and 11am every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Age Of Empires Online Shuts Down Today

Age of Empires Online takes its last breaths today. The pseudo-MMO adaptation of Microsoft’s popular series never fully caught on thanks to its limited content and rather expensive cost of purchases, as well as the cheaper, more readily available alternative titles in the series. We learned last year in January that content development had ceased, and finally in October that the servers would come down in July due to the closure of Games for Windows Live services.

With full Age of Empires titles on sale for cheap, players found little reason to throw down $20 to unlock a single civilization. Following an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign for an RTS called Wildman, Gas Powered Games laid off a number of staff and sold off to Wargaming.net.

State of Darkfall: Upcoming Updates

Aventurine has released a list of upcoming updates to Darkfall: Unholy Wars, to be released in the month of July and beyond. The first, expected for launch in the first week of July, focuses on fixing and balancing issues that have arisen since the custom roles patch last month. The second patch is the first step in creating a more customizable user interface, allowing players to tailor the UI to their preferences. Also in the works are economy rebalances, seige engines in August, and the first quest lines in September.

Further down the line, Aventurine plans to overhaul the inventory system into one that is grid-based and more easily managed, as well as an alignment system that will severely reduce the size of the safe zones, as well as the ability to enchant equipment. There is plenty more in development, including fluff items for the in-game store, and Aventurine has promised to keep us up to date on future development.

(Source: Aventurine press release)

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